Latino Daily News

Blog del Narco: Second Police Officer Dies in As Many Days in El Salvador

A Salvadoran police officer was gunned down Thursday by gang members, the second such killing in two days, the Attorney General’s Office said.

Joaquin Rosales, assigned to the Investigation Division, died in an exchange of shots with gang members in the eastern town of Guadalupe, police and the AG’s office told reporters.

Another detective, Antonio Regalado, was fatally shot Wednesday at a market in the central municipality of Quezaltepeque.

That incident left a civilian and another police officer wounded.

A police corporal and two prison guards were among the six people killed in a May 23 attack on a bus.

Homicides are running at an average of 14 a day in El Salvador, where a truce between the two leading gangs brought a sharp, albeit temporary, decline in murders until the pact fell apart earlier this year.

Levels of lethal violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are greater than in some countries suffering armed conflict, according to a report released last week in Geneva.

The study was the work of the Assessment Capacities Project, or ACAPS, created by three NGOs: HelpAge International, Merlin and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“At 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people, Honduras remains the most violent country in the world. El Salvador (41.2) and Guatemala (39.9) have higher homicide rates now than during their civil wars,” ACAPS pointed out.